Josh isn't listening. He's doing the, "We'll innovate our way out of it" handwave. You're in denial, Josh. The logistics on 100% renewables don't work out, and may never work out. We can always stop building new nuclear if they ever do, but until then new nuclear is the only achievable path off fossil fuels. You don't have a real argument. You have a bag full of best case scenario "maybes", and you're betting the world on them when there's a sure thing already available.
Edit: And now hearing your moral argument, the answer is that you are vastly overestimating the danger to future generations. Worst case scenario is that someone gets into a container 5000 years from now, they and a couple of their neighbors get sick and die, and then nobody goes in that cave again because it's "cursed". More people will probably die from fossil fuel pollution this year, than will die from properly stored nuclear waste in the next 100,000 years. That's the REAL moral "dilemma".
For me, where nuclear is interesting, is with small modular reactors. There's lots of applications that are hard to abate that could use SMRs. Industrial processes that require very high temperatures like metals, petrochemicals, cement, glass, ceramics, etc are not able to convert to electricity. They could be paired with a SMR and carbon abatement is solved.
There's also commercial shipping that could go nuclear with SMRs. We're already doing it with nuclear powered subs.
Josh isn't listening. He's doing the, "We'll innovate our way out of it" handwave. You're in denial, Josh. The logistics on 100% renewables don't work out, and may never work out. We can always stop building new nuclear if they ever do, but until then new nuclear is the only achievable path off fossil fuels. You don't have a real argument. You have a bag full of best case scenario "maybes", and you're betting the world on them when there's a sure thing already available.
Edit: And now hearing your moral argument, the answer is that you are vastly overestimating the danger to future generations. Worst case scenario is that someone gets into a container 5000 years from now, they and a couple of their neighbors get sick and die, and then nobody goes in that cave again because it's "cursed". More people will probably die from fossil fuel pollution this year, than will die from properly stored nuclear waste in the next 100,000 years. That's the REAL moral "dilemma".
For me, where nuclear is interesting, is with small modular reactors. There's lots of applications that are hard to abate that could use SMRs. Industrial processes that require very high temperatures like metals, petrochemicals, cement, glass, ceramics, etc are not able to convert to electricity. They could be paired with a SMR and carbon abatement is solved.
There's also commercial shipping that could go nuclear with SMRs. We're already doing it with nuclear powered subs.